Places! Feb. 19-25, 2015

Here are some of the performing arts events opening on local stages this week. Plus, the list of last-chance shows.

Our weekly mega-list of performing arts happenings is back on TheaterJones! It covers a Thursday-to-Wednesday cycle, and rounds up our picks for the best theater, classical music, opera, dance, comedy, spoken word/poetry and performing arts on film that are opening on North Texas stages and in movie theaters. Of all the local print or digital publications, it's the only weekly list of best bets that covers the range of performing arts—and only performing arts.

This week is filled with entries perfect for Black History Month, with nods to such Civil Rights leaders and activists as Malcolm X, Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King, Jr.; plus drag queens (in more than one show), cowboy puppets and References to Salvador Dalí...

This list doesn't have everything happening in this week's cycle, but we've hit the highlights. For more listings, click the red calendar button at the top right of the page, and then you'll see a search function, where you can search for events by presenting company, venue, title, description, date range and more options.

Note: Theater productions that have opened in a previous cycle and are in the middle of the run are not in the list below, but you can find them in the listings. On their final weekend of shows, we'll mention them in the "Last Chance" section of Places!

Get out and support the arts!

THE BIG 12

Thursday, Feb. 19 through Wednesday, Feb. 25

Photo: Danielle Deraleau/TheaterJones

Mississippi Goddamn at South Dallas Cultural Center

1. Mississippi Goddamn

South Dallas Cultural Center

Dallas playwright Jonathan Norton's progression as a writer has been fascinating to watch. He always has fantastic ideas and a knack for characters (2012's My Tidy List of Terrors and 2013's homeschooled), but if the recent staging of his short play The 67th Book of the Bible at the MLK Symposium is any indication, his work after he participated in Will Power's playwriting workshops is several steps above. That play beautifully dealt with MLK's famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, without ever showing MLK as a character onstage. His latest is Mississippi Goddamn, which he's been working on for two years and has been nurtured by grants secured by Vicki Meek of the South Dallas Cultural Center, where the play runs for three weeks. This one, titled after the Nina Simone song of the same name, is set in Jackson, Miss., on the eve of Medgar Evers' assassination. Directed by vickie washington, the cast includes Tyrees Allen, Whitney Coulter, Stormi Demerson, Calvin Gabriel, Jamal Sterling and Ashley Wilkerson. | Feb. 19-March 8

The 2013 Best Musical Tony winner, based on the 2005 movie of the same name and with lyrics by Cyndi Lauper and book by Harvey Fierstein, makes its first of two appearances in North Texas in 2015. It opens via Dallas Summer Musicals, and expect opening night (or any given performance) to be attended by drag queens in the audience. What could be more appropriate for a underdog story of a struggling British shoe factory that turns around after making footwear for drag queens. Songs include "Sex is in the Heel," "Not My Father's Son" and "Raise You Up." (The show will also come to Fort Worth's Bass Performance Hall in October.) Don't just take our word for it; see the video below, which has interviews with Lauper and Fierstein. | Previews Feb. 24, opens Feb. 25 and runs through March 8

Keep an eye out for playwright Madeleine George, locally at least. In June her play Precious Littlewill be performed by Echo Theatre in that group's LGBT series; and this week, Stage West opens The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence, which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2014 (it was beat by Annie Baker's The Flick). In this time-jumping comedy, one actor (Garret Storms) plays four characters named Watson (Alexander Graham Bell and Sherlock Holmes' assistants, a humanoid named after the IBM Jeopardy-winning computer, and a member of a Geek Squad-type outfit). The production, directed by Emily Scott Banks in her first show in that position at Stage West, also stars Allison Pistorius and Aaron Roberts. | Previews Feb. 19 and 20, opens Feb. 21 and runs through March 22

Dallas Black Dance Theatre presents its annual Cultural Awareness program, and this year it features Talley Beatty Mourner’s Bench (1947); Alvin Ailey’s Reflections in D, set to music by Duke Ellington; the world premiere of Oremus, choreographed by company dancer and resident choreographer Richard A. Freeman, Jr.; Lambarena, choreographed by Troy Powell; and A Boundless Journey, choreographed by Dianne McIntyre. | Feb. 20-22

One of the best titles for a play in the past 20 years, José Rivera's drama finally gets a North Texas production (it premiered at South Coast Repertory in 2000). It deals with a woman who awaits the return of her military husband. Because of the Dalí reference, expect some surrealism, and an interesting configuration for this production by Cara Mía Theatre Company, happening completely on the stage (the audience, too) at the Latino Cultural Center. Ruben Carrazana makes his directorial debut. | Previews Feb. 20, opens Feb. 21 and runs through March 7

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Be Boyd was on the drama faculty at Texas Christian University, and performed Anna Deveare Smith's one-woman show Fires in the Mirror at Stage West. She moved to Florida for another gig, but is returning to North Texas to direct this David Feldshuh play that looks at the aftermath of the controversial syphilis experiments on African-American men in Tuskegee, Alabama for 40 years in the mid-20th century. The cast includes Christopher Dontrell Piper, Artist Thornton II, Selmore Haines III, Alonzo Waller, Angelo Reid, Parker Fitzgerald and Regina Washington. | Previews Feb. 19, opens Feb. 20 and runs through March 8

It's time for TeCo Theatrical Productions' annual festival of short plays by local writers; and as always, it features on of the best prizes: $1,000, the winners are voted on by the audience. Below are the plays you'll see this year. | Previews Feb. 19, opens Feb. 20 and runs through March 1

Perchance to Dream by Paul William Engle — When Robert J. Carter suffers a meltdown at an important briefing, he sets in motion a showdown with the president and an examination of the good one can do in public office against the woes of modern society.

7-10 Split by Ruth Cantrell — Lois Lanes, a drag queen, goes to bowling alley to pay homage to his late grandmother and reflect in laughter and grief.

Hikers by Victor Bravo — During his annual escape from the concrete jungle, Kurt Fowler encounters a college student on a desert mountainside. The college kid is a cheery distraction from his hike, until he becomes eerily familiar.

Can I Call You Daddy? by Sam Green — A family re-hashes buried pains as a mother reveals that she has found a new love.

Nappily Ever After by Buster Spiller — Birdie Brooks attempts to set her only child, Alfreda, up on yet another blind date, much to the dismay of her husband Roy.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat or: The Dating Game by Antay Bilgutay — Drew enters the world of online dating. After each miserable date, he rewrites his profile, but only seems to attract the wrong kind of man.

Local theatrical jack-of-all-trades Justin Locklear wrote, directed and created puppets for this piece, which springboards off the myths and tall tales of the American west. From the news release: "It is the story of a humble cowboy, born during a wild astrological event, who could ride his horse through space. Doom McCoy shaped the Old West in ways we are only now beginning to understand. Coming to life through puppets and multimedia, Doom McCoy and the Death Nugget is the spiritual and cosmic journey through the life of America’s lost legend. A child and family-friendly wild west romp." | Feb. 19-28

This annual event brings together some or the area’s best dance companies, and this year is no different—there will be performances from Avant Chamber Ballet, DanceTCU, Dark Circles Contemporary Dance and Lower Left Dance Collective, in a benefit for the AIDS Outreach Center of Greater Tarrant County. | 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 21

Orpheus presents an evening of choral treasures chosen to help find peace, quiet and healing in today’s hectic world. The music on this concert, by Lauridsen, Gjeilo, Whitacre, Fauré, Duruflé, Pärt and Bryars, will be recorded for a new OCS CD. | Feb. 21-22

Sundown presents a devised piece based on the concept of love and the many ways it is defined. During each scene, performers will pick slips of paper from a jar. The words written on the paper will form the basis of improvised vignettes on the subject of love and actors will use dialogue, movement and improvisation to explore and demonstrate the words that can define and impact romantic relationships. | Feb. 20-March 1

The Euripides drama and Moliére comedy begin preview performances in the Dallas Theater Center's new Classics Initiative. They run in rotating repertory at the Kalita Humphreys Theater, with School on the mainstage and Medea in a basement space | Previews begin Feb. 19; both shows open March 1 and run through March 29 (look for more about these shows next week in Places!)

Stolen Shakespeare Guild's Verona festival, which opened last week with Romeo and Juliet, opens Two Gents this weekend; both shows will run in rep at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center | Through March 1

» For complete listings of what's happening on North Texas stages, click on the calendar iconat the top right of the page. Once there, you can click the red "Search the Calendar" box, and search for listings by dates, performance type, the presenting company, titles or descriptions. For instance, type "Shakespeare" into the description field, click SEARCH and you'll find a host of performances (theater, dance, music, etc.) by, adapted from or about the Bard.

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